


every ghost of you

by amaranthinecanicular



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 09:33:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19809553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaranthinecanicular/pseuds/amaranthinecanicular
Summary: Steve and Bucky have spent a lot of time watching each other. All their lives, really.





	every ghost of you

**Author's Note:**

> Really this whole thing was inspired by that three second clip in Civil War of Steve and Bucky staring at each other in an elevator in Siberia. Takes my breath away every time.

You stare at him in the elevator. 

The bunker is not new but still the drop is quick and quiet. There is a thought, just in the back of your mind, devoted to the subtle way your stomach flutters as you go: that funny little flip has persisted in every elevator you’ve ever been in, now and then and a lifetime ago, and there might be some comfort to the idea that at least some things never change.

Bucky is not one of those things. In the two years since he rose from the dead you could hardly look at him for the pain it caused you, and then when you were able he was already in the wind. You’ve had no opportunity (no time, no heart) to observe all the ways he is different until now. This brief descent into earth and concrete gives you ample chance to catalogue and compartmentalize each and every way that he is changed. 

His hair reaches past his jaw; before all this, a century ago, you’d never seen it past his ears. He’s broader than he was, roped in muscle and scar tissue, dense where he once was lean. Some of that’s the serum. Most of it’s the direct result of life as a weapon. He used to hold himself like a soldier and he still does, but now there’s something else about him, something set into the marrow of his bones that shapes his skeleton and makes him hunted. (The scars in him run so much deeper than they ever should have.) And sure, he liked a five o’clock shadow back then (roguish, he used to call it) but now his jaw is dark and rough and it makes him look older than he is. Which is impossible, of course. He is young but he is old. You are both old, relics from another time, but in some ways—the shadows around his mouth, the shadows of his scars, the shadows in his eyes—Bucky is so much older and it hurts you. 

Bucky is different; Bucky is changed. But he is still Bucky. His jaw may be darker but it is _his_ jaw, and who would know better than you, who spent oh so many summers pretending not to daydream of his silhouette, the arch of his jaw and how perfect it would fit in the palm of your hand. (It still looks like it would.) 

You kissed Sharon because the two of you could have been something wonderful if Bucky’s ghost had stayed buried, and there’s still a part of your heart that’s just a little bit broken for things that might have been. But he didn’t stay buried and that kiss had felt like goodbye; her jaw never looked like it would fit to your hand quite like his did and maybe she knew that. Bucky smiled at you from the car then and it was painfully clear that his mouth had forgotten how to, but it was still his smile. And when he lifts his head and stares back in the elevator, for just a few breathless moments of freefall, his eyes are ever the same.

So yeah. You stare at him. His face is two feet from your face and you stare at him, because in another time you never got to, and this might be your last chance. Because years of your life were carved away bloody and raw thinking he was dead and now he is not but he might be, soon, you might lose him again at the end of this drop (and, God, you don’t know if you can survive it again). Because Sharon is gone but he is not, and Peggy is gone but he is not, him, Bucky, your last anchor to your first home. Because his hair is too long but his eyes are still the soft and lovely eyes of a boy you were so desperately in love with you thought it would kill you. You think it still might.

(You think you might let it, if only you could stare at him forever.)

\--

He stares at you in the elevator.

Captain America, Steve Rogers—he’s more of a ghost to you than a man. He can rarely bear to look at you, but that’s okay, because you can look at him even less. His ghost is a bright, pulsing thing, and from the corners of your eyes it haunts you: a scrawny, scrappy teen, all bones and bright teeth. Or a soldier with a heart too big for his body, which got pretty damn big all of a sudden. Or a vagabond hero displaced in time, haunted by his own ghosts. He looks at you like you're one of them.

And maybe that's what you are, and maybe that's for the better. From this place outside yourself, as a stranger to the both of you, you have perspective. Things are clearer. Old memories take a new light: two idiot kids in Brooklyn, with different details highlighted. The lingering. The longing. Words and touches and glances. Why didn't Bucky see it? The lengths to which Captain America went to retrieve him from a place he didn't know he'd gone. Why didn't the Winter Soldier realize? Why did you pull me from the river I don't know yes you do. He stares at you and Bucky and the Winter Soldier in the elevator and yes, you know why. All these years later. All the people you've been. Yes you do. Your ghost recognizes his ghost. Yes you do. Yes you do.

Some things never change, you realize that now, and that might be a tragedy. You weren’t lying when you said you weren’t worth it. He deserves better than you and your ghosts. He deserves better, but he wants you.

He stares at you in the elevator. No more than ten seconds of falling. You stare back.

\--

He doesn't stare from the pod.

You want him to. It’s not the hardest thing you’ve ever done, putting him back under after finally dragging him out, but it’s up there. If he asked you to take him away from here, if he looked at you just once, you would. There are so many things you would do for Bucky if only he asked—just look at all the things you’ve done without his asking. The lengths you would go to get longer all the time. It scares you sometimes, though not nearly as much as it should. After everything with Tony in Siberia you feel fear less often than you feel a very deep sadness.

He knows that, you think. The pain of you. The things you would do. Mere seconds in an elevator spoke lifetimes for the both of you, and you think now he knows everything. And he knows that if he looked at you, you would never leave. You’d wait here, with him and for him, for however long it took. He would never do that to you, however much you’d like to be chained to him. Trying to protect you—it’s a very Bucky thing to do. He's been doing it your whole lives, though you always said you didn’t need it, even before it was true. You can’t blame him. After all, you do the same thing.

You stare at him, and you tell yourself you’ll be here when he wakes, but you won’t be. You’re going to regret that later.

\--

You stare at him on the battlefield. After it’s over.

Thanos is gone. The world is quiet. You don’t know that it’s coming except you do, you do, you’ve died before and you know how it feels. 

You’re staring at him. Watching his back walk away from you. Is this how he felt? You left him for the war. You left him for the Soldier. You left him to protect him, or so you told yourself, you walked away and you never looked back and if this is how he felt— 

Something quietly desperate rises in you, something you held back in the pod. And of all the unforgivable things you’ve done in your too long life perhaps this is the worst: calling his name now when you didn’t then, asking him to look you in the eye one more time. Making him watch as you go.

But you do. And he does. He’s the last thing you see and then he’s left staring at what once was you.

But before that—

Before that, you’re home. Home in Wakanda—home in Steve’s presence. You’ve added another identity to your roster (White Wolf, and Steve will laugh when you tell him later). Sometimes you wish you’d looked at him in the pod, for one last memory to carry with you as you faded away. Some ghostling part of you believed that sleep would be the last sleep. 

But it wasn’t. And when you woke you felt more like yourself than you had in years. Wakanda really is amazing, you thought, and you’ve thought it again and again a dozen times since. You could stand to live and die here.

Which, apparently, you might. People are saying the world is ending (you've heard that before) and it seems you will never stop being a weapon. You could be angry about that, but it’s hard to be angry about something you’ve known was true for decades. More than anything it just makes you tired. 

And then he’s there in front of you and however weary you are and however angry you could be, it all ceases to matter. It doesn’t hurt to look at him. Finally, finally. Captain America. Steve Rogers. You have loved him all your life, every ghost of you, even when you didn’t know it. Even when you didn’t know him. 

In a moment he’ll ask how you’ve been and he’ll call you Buck and he’ll put his arms around you. In more moments and moments and moments you’ll be dust on his fingers. But for now you stare at him, and he stares at you, because some things never change and it might be a comfort or it might be a tragedy or it might be somewhere in between. 

\--

You stare at him in the dark. 

You’re going to be too old for this soon. You’re too old for it now. Bucky’s feet dangle over the edge of the cushions and your ma coughs damply in the next room like marking the hour. The doctors don’t like the sound of it, but they don’t know her like you do. She’s the strongest person there is. 

When you told Buck what the doctors said he followed you home and helped you with dinner, and he made your ma laugh, and then he reached for the couch cushions. You told him you didn’t need this but he knew, like he always does. Some things never change. That’s a comfort, you think. 

Bucky’s breathing has evened out. You take the opportunity to admire him the way you can’t in the sunlight. The fan of his eyelashes, gilded by the nighttime glow coming in through the window. The bridge of his nose. The highlight along his jaw. You've got this secret notion that your hand would fit his jaw perfectly, even if the rest of you wouldn’t. You don’t often wish you were bigger—you don’t let yourself, Bucky already caught you once with papers in your shoes—but you’d like to be big right now. Big enough to protect your ma from this thing trying to cannibalize her. Big enough to hold Bucky properly. 

But you aren’t big enough. No newspapers are going to change that.

“Go to sleep already,” Bucky grumbles. You grin a little. You can’t help it.

“How’d you know I was awake?”

“What’re you talking about?” His eyes stay closed but he smiles, and you can see it. Watery moonlight provides the outline. Memory and imagination sketch out the rest. “Because I know you.”

Your heart floods. 

Your eyes are aching but you don’t want to close them. Bucky knows it, because he always knows it, and he says, “I’m not going anywhere. With you to the end of the line.”

Your eyes fall shut. He’ll be there in the morning. You have time. 

—

You stare at him, the grainy blue paleness of the hologram. Peggy is a frayed photo cut out and thumb pressed into a compass. Bucky is one flickering profile among billions, and he is so many images inside your head. A lifetime of them. He used to love having his picture taken. He was cleancut and charming and vain about it. He hasn’t been that way for too long, but you remember the last time you saw him smiling, and it wasn’t for a camera.

You’ll never stop losing him. Will you ever stop losing him?

You can’t bring him up in group, you don’t even dare. It’s hypocritical. You encourage the others to be open. To move on. Peggy you can talk about. Sometimes Sam and Wanda. But you horde Bucky like a miser, keep him so close to the chest he becomes cancerous. Tumors of him, growing in your heart, until closing your eyes and seeing him there is like prodding a festering sore. Young and smiling in the dark. Young and smiling off to war. The train and the fall and his reaching hand. His eyes that didn’t know you. The elevator and his eyes that did. The last time you saw him smiling. The last time you saw him at all. He looked at you. He met your eyes.

You keep him close and closer until it hurts to look at him just like it used to, and no, no, you’ll never stop losing him, but you don’t even want to, you want him to always be killing you slowly, because the process of losing is preferable to the finality of lost. If you lost him again it might kill you. Forever and for good. Some things never change.

I keep telling people to move on, you said to Natasha. But not us. Not us.

—

You stare at him for the last time.

Steve is—different. Changed. You died and then you didn’t and the price was too high. Five years and half of everything. Five years and two good friends. He doesn’t—he doesn’t look at you like he used to look at you. How he looks at you now, it’s like an afterthought, like he’s double checking you’re still there. Or else he has trouble meeting your eyes at all, as though he’s afraid you’ll vanish again, and he doesn’t want to see it. And when he isn’t looking at you, he’s tired. You would know. He’s tired.

He said once—he was sitting with you in Wakanda, he was taking a break from repairing and rebuilding. He was watching the sun shatter into component colors against the dome, and you were watching him not watching you. Your adopted home was building back up on all sides, half a country’s population returned overnight with nowhere to go. And he said: other people move on, but not us. 

His eyes were wet, and his face was empty. He was too exhausted to grieve.

Steve is changed, but he’s still Steve. He deserves better than this, and you, and that will never change. Losing them, losing you—you think it almost killed him. The price was too high, and you weren’t worth it. If he has his way he’ll endure this until it eats him alive. You can’t let that happen. This time, just this once, you are going to save him. 

There’s a mission coming up. Return the stones. It’s the way out, you both know it, but he would never leave unless you let him go.

So you—you. You let him go.

Banner is checking his instruments. Wilson is in the dark. Steve is watching you, like he hasn’t been able to in weeks. (Years, really. You were gone a long time.) He pulls you in and you find the shape of yourself against him, like you always did. You forgot who you were until he reminded you. You forgot who you were but you always knew him, even when you didn’t. 

“I’m going to miss you,” you tell him. You shouldn’t say it but you do, because these are the last moments. He stares at you. You stare at each other.

“It’s going to be okay, Buck,” he says. It won’t be. He doesn’t need to know that. 

You only let yourself breathe when the timestamp comes and goes. The truth is you’ve never been as selfless as Steve, and you were afraid you wouldn’t let him go. But you managed. And when you see the old man on the bench, you think, with no small measure of relief and grief and acceptance: some people move on, but not us.

You’re staring at a ghost, and your first thought is: huh. Looks like you’ve finally cracked. You take a thoughtful bite of the plum in your hand. Overdue, really. 

Except he’s not a ghost. Captain America is leaning in your doorway, silhouetted by Wakandan sunshine and as young and perfect as you knew him one week ago, before he returned to you ages older. 

You say through a mouthful of fruit, “So do I get to go back and grow old with Dot?”

Steve grins. You missed that. You missed him, you always have. “Did you love Dot?”

“I only ever loved you.”

It comes out and it’s—easy. Easier than you ever expected. The easiest thing you’ve ever said, and you feel giddy with wondering why the fuck you never said it before. Like all your wounds and insecurities and phantoms just—turned to dust, ha. Steve wouldn’t like that joke. You’re still holding the plum.

He stares at you and—and no, he’s not a ghost at all. It’s just him. Just Steve, looking at you like he always looked at you. He said something about that, about running time through a person instead of the other way around. Who more fitting than Steve? The only person who could compare is you.

He steps to you. Neither of you flinch back. That’s a marvel.

“Sorry I took so long,” he says, earnest. You’re unimpressed by it.

“I told you to go,” you remind him. “And you were gone for less than five minutes.” Not that long when you were expecting forever. 

“A lifetime,” Steve says. And, well. He’s not wrong.

“You were happy.”

“Yes,” Steve says. He gently extracts the plum from your bruising grip. Places it on the low table at your hip. Touches your hand instead, carefully, heedless of any sticky sweetness left on your fingers.

“You could have stayed.” And suddenly your throat is tight, even if your eyes are dry. “You didn’t have to come back. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. You were happy—”

“I missed you,” he’s squeezing your hand and you’re squeezing it back, “Buck, you’ve got to know—it never seemed right to say, we were in the wrong place or—or the wrong time,” He’s floundering. He’s drifting closer. You let both happen. “I missed you more than I could ever—I loved you first, there’s no way you don’t know—”

You kiss him. Or he kisses you. Maybe you’d have expected a passionate whirlwind, if you had ever expected this at all, but he touches you and all the years of longing and almost and if only—they just—settle, and lie quiet. Maybe it worked. Maybe his time away healed him, knit his wounds closed and made him whole. You’re not there yet, you don’t know that you’ll ever be, but. For now. For once. All you feel is peace.

He presses his mouth to your forehead, and then presses your foreheads together. You brace yourself on his shoulder. He reaches up and cradles your jaw. His hands shake. Yours do not.

“To the end of the line,” he says. His voice is raw.

“To the end of the line,” you say. And there are no ghosts. You have time.


End file.
